“Teddy,” was
born August 2, 1944 in Boston, Massachusetts. As a child, the
Muses adored him, the Fates guided him and the Furies tormented him. Some things never change . . .

Young Travis loved to read,
but like many children growing up in the 40's and 50's, his imagination
was also fired by radio dramas like "The Shadow," "Captain Midnight" and
"The Lone Ranger." Then, in the mid-fifties, his father, James
A. Pike, film director at WNAC-TV in Boston, launched "Cinema
7," a Sunday afternoon double feature for television, establishing standards for screening each film, censoring them for TV when
necessary, and lovingly inserting commercials so as to avoid jarring
interruptions to the story. Best of all, his dad screened many
of the movies at home at 65 Waverly Street in Roxbury, which meant
that Teddy and Jimmy Riggs, his friend from next door, as long as they
sat quietly, were allowed to see hundreds of Hollywood's greatest films.
They thrilled to such movie greats as "Gunga Din," "Charge of the Light Brigade," "Thirty Seconds
Over Tokyo," "Twelve O'Clock High," "The African Queen" and "King Kong."
And Travis learned story construction, lighting, set design, camera angles,
costume design, film scoring, acting and directing from the best in the
business.

At the Sarah J. Baker Elementary
School in Roxbury, Travis was a straight "A" student, so it seemed only
natural that in 1956 he follow his older brother Jim, into Boston Latin
School. But there, in 7th grade, Travis took his first steps toward
becoming an independent scholar. During study halls, his imagination
fired by exposure to Aesop, Homer, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar,
Galileo, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Mendel's famous peas,
11-year-old Travis began writing imaginative narrative poems and short
stories instead of doing his homework. In his new and enriched environment,
his schoolboy's brain was enflamed by questions extracurricular, which
drove him to seek answers to mysteries ancient and modern at local libraries,
museums and at the movies instead of in the classroom.

Travis' first literary work
was a ballad written in 1956 during a study hall at Boston Latin School.
The tale has been lost these many years, along with its title and theme,
but the incident was never forgotten. The lad received five misdemeanor
marks for his confiscated literary effort. (For those of you who
are unsure, this was a bad thing, not a good one.)

By the time his dad left
WNAC TV to start his own independent motion picture company, it was determined
that Travis was unlikely to benefit from continuing at Boston Latin School,
especially since the family had moved out of the City of Boston during
the summer and tuition and transportation would be required. Instead,
the boy from Roxbury was enrolled in the Newton School System, where its
system of “progressive education” had no better luck with the “rebellious”
youth.

"I don't blame the schools,"
says Travis. "Boston Latin School's classical academic program was
the best in the nation and Newton's progressive education program was highly
touted by social engineers. Nevertheless, institutions rate performance
on standard levels of achievement, which require conformity for measurement
and are unable to evaluate genuinely independent scholars."